Thursday, March 19, 2015

I have reached the stage where it's time to draw the last ten pages of my comic Dump. It's a trepidatious and exciting feeling.

In writing the story, I've known what the final page is for a good while. Leading up to it, I jotted down ideas about what could happen as I went along. I picked and chose what was pertinent to the overall story. Sometimes I don't use ideas I really like because they are distracting from what I'm trying to get across. How do I know what's correct? The great thing about writing is I am in charge of deciding these things.

I had previously written up a run of 7 pages and hit my final page. After a read through or two, I wrote down a few things I thought I needed to get across to the reader. So another three pages were written. I sat down tonight and drew up a wee plan (shown above - sans plot details) to put the pages in the order they will appear. Everything is in there now, and adjustments to dialogue have been made because of the new running order. You really want to try and get everything in its proper place before finishing the pages - rewriting comics is not as simple as rewriting prose.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Not really. But that was the open call that went out as part
of the “Comics, So What?” event that took place recently, arranged by Chris
Murray and Phillip Vaughan at The University of Dundee.

Attendees were invited to discuss favourite comic pages and
why they liked them. I went along armed with two related pages.

Photo by Damon Herd.

As I said on the
day, choosing your favourite comics page is an impossible task, so what I
decided to do was concentrate on the first page I can remember appreciating for
the comics storytelling devices it used, as opposed to purely enjoying the
story for what was happening in it. I had definitely read comics prior to this,
such as The Dandy and Spider-Man, but here is where I took a step towards
appreciating comics for being comics…

This is Star Wars by Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin, which
puts us in the late 1970s. It would have been a case of me asking my Dad for
this because it said Star Wars in big letters on it, in much the same way that
I wanted the ice lolly, bubble gum cards, etc.

To set up the story of this page: As the cantina sequence in
the movie had been so memorable and popular with audiences, one of the first
things to occur in the comics was a visit to a similar establishment. Over the
preceding couple of pages, the green lizard alien shown here has been bullying
Han Solo, who at first displays his usual bravura self in dealing with this, and
tells his aggressor to get lost before his wookiee friend beats him up. But
Chewbacca has taken a temporary leave of absence and as Solo realises his
predicament, so do we as readers. The lizard throws Solo across the room in the
last panel of the page before this one.

In the first panel above he lands in the arms of Chewie. We now
know where the story is going. The tables have been turned and Chewbacca is
hopefully going to put the alien in his place. The page builds up nicely to
this, the bully now going from offensively cocksure to scared.

Crucially, and the part that impressed me as a kid, was that
we do not get to see the point of impact when Chewbacca moves from passive to
aggressive. The scene switches to outside and the lizard is smashing through
the window – we are left to picture for ourselves Chewbacca hitting him.

A couple of years after I read that, the 1962 Hulk page
above by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby was reprinted in a UK Hulk Annual. They were
printed on nicer paper than the US
comics, explaining the clarity of the page over the Star Wars one. I’ve written
about it on this blog before, and decided to
take it along for this talk as Kirby is applying the same device as Chaykin
i.e. we don’t get to see the Hulk hitting the Human Cannonball.

This page also has a lot of other artistic merits; the
movement and weight of the Hulk is dramatically shown in the third, fourth,
fifth and seventh panels. The extreme angle switches for each panel are
cleverly designed and effortless for the reader to understand. It’s a great
example of Kirby’s prowess.

The decision to not actually depict the hero striking the
villain in these two pages gives us two examples of the story telling trope of
showing, and not telling. This practice does not apply only to physical action,
but that was a great place to start for me as a kid.

Twenty years later Scott McCloud explained this in his very
influential book Understanding Comics, but I was lucky enough to pick it up firsthand
while sitting on my couch eating sweets and reading about Star Wars and The Hulk.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

I attended the Scottish Comics Unconference Meet-Up in Glasgow last week. Here are a few photos from the day.

This is the table where attendees left comics donations in order to repay the free use of the venue. A pretty good selection, I thought.

Here's Damon Herd drawing the sign which would later be used to collect ideas for topics to be discussed.

Hattie Kennedy calls proceedings to order.

Kelly Kanayama considers topics. I wrote "Making comics" and "Self-publishing".

Unfortunately, the two talks I was most interested in clashed (Self-publishing and Autobiography). As it was, I went for self-publishing and was asked to talk about my experiences to get the thing rolling.

As the day progressed, it was nice to see many of the people at the discussions drawing away. Ludi Price encouraged me to join in too and I did! I tweeted the following:

The day ended with a DeeCAP comics reading. I decided to do my two stories from the latest issue of Treehouse. Here's a photo taken by cartoonist Paddy Johnston (who also performed):

The Unconference seemed to be enjoyed by everyone. I'd certainly go along if they held another one.

Tuesday, March 03, 2015

I think the next Spider-Man movie should include his origin
again, to help people get to know the character. I think the film after that
should then feature Uncle Ben again, getting shot, a new actor playing
Spider-Man, a new director. A year later include the origin again with a new
Spider-Man. Come on we can do this.

Alternatively, no origin recap, but recast The Lizard and
Green Goblin again. Or don't use the Goblin again. Bring in a guy with a
fishbowl to be Mysterio. No, no fishbowl.

Can’t wait for a CGI figure to streak through the sky and
land beside Thor in Avengers 3 and then a real life actor (DOESN’T MATTER) to
say 'I’m Spider-Man, Thor'. Awesome. Then The Guardians of the
Galaxy will land their spaceship on top of them.

I want Hugh Jackman to appear, and whoever is playing the FF
in the concurrent reboot (or recast them for this appearance). Put Nicolas Cage on a motorbike and set his head on fire again.

Can DC and Marvel merge FFS? I want all the characters
to fight each other in an orgy of destruction, before entering a new dimension
and fighting the Empire in Star Wars.